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Wenger staying and will be spending & Is there more to losing players each year than we all know?

So Arsene Wenger is going nowhere, despite all that has been going wrong and according to Ivan Gazidis, he will have money to waste spend again in January. Apparently Stan Kroenke, who understands everything about the current game and it’s on-field tactics, believes our manager is the right one to take our club back to the top.

Arsene Wenger believes that the only reason we haven’t been as successful as we could have been is all down to selling losing players each year.

Really Arsene?

Talking to Four Four Two magazine he said:

My regret is that we already had a great team two or three years ago which could compete on four fronts. We just missed out in the Champions League [last 16 tie] against Barcelona, when we could have scored in the last minute, and then we just missed out on the Premier League too.

But you could feel the potential was there, and I thought, ‘OK, let’s do this together’. Then the team split up. Sometimes after five or six years’ work, it is frustrating, you have to start all over again.

We have lost recent players earlier in their careers – to lose Van Persie, Fabregas, Nasri and Song in just two years, it is a massive amount of potential, of course you worry.

Takes us nicely onto today’s post:

The first high profile Arsenal player I remember leaving us was Frank Stapleton in 1981. I’d been an Arsenal supporter for just under 2 years at that time and I clearly remember being gutted when he left for Man Ure. I was only 8 at the time but I’d already grown to love him as a player in the red and white. Maybe I was too young and innocent to notice but I don’t recall there being more than general disappointment that he’d left us.

Over the ensuing years many players that we’ve loved have come and gone and some have even managed to stay firmly ensconced in our hearts, forever cherished for what they’ve achieved in our colours. However, some have had quite the opposite experience.

Of more recent times the first player whose departure I recall causing more than a bit of a stir is Mathieu Flamini. Many Gooners were incensed that he didn’t sign the contract offered to him, (albeit not long before his other contract expired), and he was vilified by many for not doing so. Since then many more have left for pastures new and, it has to be said, far higher wages.

Some of them I simply didn’t give a damn about, in fact I was quite glad to see the back of them but others made me feel betrayed. They’d let me and the rest of the Gooner Nation down.

Adebarndoor, Nasri, Cesc, Cashley & Robin, they’ve all gone and I’ve despised each of them for their callous mercenary behaviour. Theo and Sagna look decidedly like they’re next.

I guess I should hate them too. Or should I?

Are they all just money grabbing little upstarts or is there something else happening behind closed doors at our club, I mean business, I mean club that we just aren’t privy to? I mean, is it really coincidence that year on year we lose at least two of our top players?

I’m really beginning to smell a rat.

I genuinely believe that Theo would like to stay. So what’s stopping him?

There are many rumours around Arsenal’s contract negotiations with Theo, like he’s holding out for £100k pw and that he wants assurances that he’ll play up front. The latest is that Arsenal are trying to impose a clause cutting wages in the event of not qualifying for the champions league.

I don’t know if this is true but if it is I’m not sure it sends the right message to the likes of our current top scorer. It also makes me wonder how long this sort of thing has been going on.

Right now it’s something I can readily believe has been rife since Wenger inexplicably dismantled the Invincibles and I feel compelled to ask the question, why do these guys feel the need to leave just when we look like we could start winning pots again?

Something is not right at our club and I’m beginning to wonder if I might have been directing my anger and disappointment at the wrong people. Are the modern day Frank Stapletons really the villains here?

Or are the club leadership really responsible for making these guys feel like they have no choice?

The bottom line for me is that my instincts tell me not to trust a word that comes out of Arsenal FC at the present time and I wonder if we haven’t been just a teeny bit harsh on the guys that got a better offer and took it.